After Looking into Carlyles Reminiscences - Sonnets

I.     Three men lived yet when this dead man was young     Whose names and words endure for ever one:     Whose eyes grew dim with straining toward the sun,     And his wings weakened, and his angels tongue     Lost half the sweetest song was ever sung,     But like the strain half uttered earth hears none,     Nor shall man hear till all mens songs are done:     One whose clear spirit like an eagle hung     Between the mountains hallowed by his love     And the sky stainless as his soul above:     And one the sweetest heart that ever spake     The brightest words wherein sweet wisdom smiled.     These deathless names by this dead snake denied     Bid memory spit upon him for their sake. II.     Sweet heart, forgive me for thine own sweet sake,     Whose kind blithe soul such seas of sorrow swam,     And for my loves sake, powerless as I am     For love to praise thee, or like thee to make     Music of mirth where hearts less pure would break,     Less pure than thine, our life-unspotted Lamb.     Things hatefullest thou hadst not heart to damn,     Nor wouldst have set thine heel on this dead snake.     Let worms consume its memory with its tongue,     The fang that stabbed fair Truth, the lip that stung     Mens memories uncorroded with its breath.     Forgive me, that with bitter words like his     I mix the gentlest English name that is,     The tenderest held of all that know not death.